Inflation and employment -- this is what the contest is actually judging you on. Everything else in this briefing is supporting context.
FRED, most recent observation per series.
| Indicator | Latest | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPI (All Urban Consumers) | 2026-06-01 | 332.57 | ▼ 1.41 |
| Core PCE Price Index | 2026-06-01 | 130.27 | ▲ 0.17 |
| Unemployment Rate | 2026-07-01 | 4.10 | ▼ 0.10 |
| Nonfarm Payrolls | 2026-07-01 | 158,858.00 | ▼ 23.00 |
| Real GDP | 2026-04-01 | 24,270.60 | ▲ 90.18 |
| Fed Funds Effective Rate | 2026-07-01 | 3.63 | — 0.00 |
| 10-Year Treasury Yield | 2026-08-06 | 4.69 | ▲ 0.06 |
| 2-Year Treasury Yield | 2026-08-06 | 4.25 | ▲ 0.07 |
| Initial Jobless Claims | 2026-08-01 | 199,000.00 | ▲ 1,000.00 |
| University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment | 2026-06-01 | 49.50 | ▲ 4.70 |
| Empire State Mfg Survey (General Business Conditions) | 2026-07-01 | 15.60 | ▲ 9.90 |
Empire State Manufacturing Survey (seasonally adjusted diffusion indexes) -- your differentiator against teams running purely national analysis.
| Indicator | Latest | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Business Conditions | 2026-07-31 | 15.6 | ▲ 9.90 |
| New Orders | 2026-07-31 | 22.2 | ▲ 18.70 |
| Shipments | 2026-07-31 | 24.4 | ▲ 15.80 |
| Prices Paid | 2026-07-31 | 52.3 | ▼ 8.70 |
| Prices Received | 2026-07-31 | 27.6 | ▼ 3.80 |
| Number of Employees | 2026-07-31 | 11.4 | ▲ 1.80 |
yfinance, ~15-minute delayed.
| Indicator | Symbol | Last | Prior | % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 | ^GSPC | nan | nan | — nan% |
| 10Y Treasury Yield (index) | ^TNX | 4.66 | 4.67 | ▼ 0.21% |
| US Dollar Index | DX-Y.NYB | 99.60 | 99.97 | ▼ 0.37% |
| Crude Oil (WTI) | CL=F | 78.18 | 77.29 | ▲ 1.15% |
| Gold | GC=F | 4,340.70 | 4,242.00 | ▲ 2.33% |
| 2Y Treasury Yield (index) | ^UST2Y | nan | nan | — nan% |
No FOMC statement supplied -- rerun with --fomc-statement to include this section.
Public record from federalreserve.gov, paraphrased in our own words -- for studying approach, not for copying into your script.
Framed the whole 15 minutes as a single live FOMC-style debate about how fast to keep cutting rates after starting an easing cycle. Walked through growth, then labor, then inflation, then financial conditions, in that order, before landing on a specific vote.
Their evidence wasn't just data points -- it was data points attributed to specific, real, current voices (a named Fed president's public comments, a named academic's recent research). That's precisely what the rubric's top tier asks for: 'a wide variety of authoritative sources,' not just charts.
Structuring genuine on-mic disagreement between teammates is a hard way to present, but it's the clearest possible evidence against the rubric's warning sign of 'one or two team members dominate.' Every presenter both made a claim and pushed back on a teammate's claim at least once.
The explicit agenda at the very start (what topics, in what order, ending in a vote) gave judges a map before the content even began -- exactly the 'logical and coherent organization' the top rubric tier calls for.
Not directly observable from the presentation alone, but the format itself -- team members trained to argue live against their own teammates' positions -- is a natural way to build the quick, poised rebuttal skill the Q&A round specifically scores.